DUP agrees principles to back UK Conservatives

Asked if Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna – both of whom had been reported to be planning leadership bids if Labour lost seats in the general election – could come back to the front bench, Corbyn said: “I am the most generous person in the world”. “Let’s get on with the job”.

May said Brexit talks would begin on June 19 as scheduled, the same day the British parliament is due to reconvene.

“It’s just how long she’s going to remain on death row”, former Conservative finance minister George Osborne, who was sacked by May when she became prime minister past year, told the BBC.The Conservatives won 318 House of Commons seats in Thursday’s election, eight short of an outright majority. The main opposition Labour Party surpassed expectations by winning 262.

Opposition leader Jeremyn Corbyn said his party would vote down Mrs May’s Queen’s Speech – or programme for government, when she presented it to Parliament – and another election might be needed to break the deadlock.

The premier was unable to carry out wholesale cabinet changes that had been mooted before the election, with most ministers staying in the same jobs. But few believe she can hang on for more than a few months.

On Sunday, May appointed former BBC journalist Damien Green as First Secretary of State – effectively May’s deputy Prime Minister – in a reshuffle of her cabinet.

Senior Conservative lawmaker Graham Brady said the prospect of being propped up by the socially conservative DUP, which is strongly focused on Northern Ireland’s specific political complexities, was causing concern in his party.

May named Michael Gove, who unsuccessfully ran against her for the party leadership past year and whom she then fired from the Ministry of Justice, as her new environment secretary. “May stares into the abyss”, wrote The Times, while Conservative-supporting The Sun tabloid said succinctly: “She’s had her chips”.

May is negotiating a partnership with the Northern Irish party after failing to secure a majority in this week’s election.

DUP Leader Arlene Foster recently denied the party was homophobic.

The DUP issued its own statement dismissing the claim of a deal, apparently angry at the attempt to bounce the party into signing up before it was ready.

“If any of that is a condition of confidence and supply it simply won’t work”.

A confidence-and-supply arrangement means the DUP would support May’s government in exchange for concessions on some issues rather than forming a formal governing coalition that controls a majority in Parliament.

The arrangement makes some Conservatives uneasy. His party “didn’t win the election”, Corbyn says, but he is prepared to continue resisting the Conservative agenda – especially what’s known as “hard Brexit”, a clean break with the European Union and departure from its single market system.

Mrs May, who was working on putting her Cabinet together, sent Chief Whip Gavin Williamson to Belfast for talks with DUP counterpart Sir Jeffrey Donaldson. Liam Fox, trade minister, also said that May was the only person to take Britain out of the European Union.

The British government doesn’t have long to ink a deal.

On the DUP deal, she added: “If DUP vote for the Queen’s Speech and Budget, I don’t have a problem with that”. Without the amendments, he said Labour would try to vote down the speech.

“I can still be prime minister”, Corbyn tells the Sunday Mirror.

The Prime Minister was forced to perform an unprecedented U-turn within days of the publication of the Tory manifesto by announcing there would be a cap on social care costs, something that had been absent in the original policy document.